Chris Webber thought he would have the opportunity to win a championship when he joined the Detroit Pistons in 2007. Everything was going the way he envisioned it until the Pistons faced LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers in the Eastern Conference finals.
Detroit finished first in the East and did not really encounter any major challenge in the first two rounds of the playoffs. The Pistons even secured a commanding 2-0 lead over James and the Cavs. However, the Cavs bounced back and won Games 3 and 4.
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Both teams headed to Game 5 knowing it could dictate who would win the series. Just when the Pistons thought they were in control, LeBron exploded late in the game and scored 48 points to lift the Cavs to a 109-107 win.
The Game 5 victory gave the Cavs the confidence they needed to close the series out. They torched the Pistons in Game 6 and made it all the way to the Finals.
“Whatever he did, he hurt our feelings and kept us from a championship,” Webber reflected on The Dan Patrick Show this past May.
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Rasheed will never forget LeBron’s performance
That season, the Pistons were trying to win another NBA title while the majority of the core that won the 2004 Finals were still healthy. Webber said that among the key players on the squad, Rasheed Wallace anchored the Pistons’ defense against the Cavs in that series.
Wallace led all Pistons players in both steals and blocks, averaging 1.7 steals and 2.7 blocks per game. With that in mind, Webber understood why Sheed was devastated to have failed to stop or even limit LeBron in Game 5.
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“I’mma call Rasheed Wallace and remind him of that… That’s something that hurt Rasheed the most as a defensive player, that it was one guy on the floor that we couldn’t stop,” C-Webb added.
The Pistons didn’t know what hit them
It’s easy to see why the Pistons are still hurt by how James destroyed them that night. LeBron finished the game with a monster tally of 48 points, nine rebounds, seven assists and two steals. However, it wasn’t his numbers that stung the Pistons the most.
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For former Pistons shooting guard Rip Hamilton, it was the fact that James scored 25 consecutive points in the game’s final minutes, including a game-winning layup. Hamilton was confident that the Pistons had the best defensive unit in the league at the time, but admittedly, they couldn’t do anything to stop James.
“We knew that he scored a lot, when you say a lot we thought in the back of our minds he scored like 10 straight points. We didn’t think 25 straight points,” Hamilton recalled. “We didn’t think at that time, during the game, ‘Let’s just take the ball out of his hands. Let’s make somebody else score.’ We felt as though we were so good at that time, we said, ‘There’s no way — impossible — that one individual can beat us.’ Kobe Bryant and Shaq couldn’t do it — we didn’t feel that LeBron could do it either.”
To this day, James’ 48-point outburst against the Pistons remains one of the greatest playoff performances of his career. In contrast, Detroit considers it one of the darkest moments in the franchise’s history.
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This story was originally reported by Basketball Network on Aug 24, 2025, where it first appeared in the Old School section. Add Basketball Network as a Preferred Source by clicking here.